Today it is almost impossible to write professional style games without using at least some aspects of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a useful tool to use to help to create characters that have a choice of responses to games player's actions, but have to be able to act in a fairly unpredictable fashion.

Video game artificial intelligence is a programming area that tries to make the computer act in a similar way to human intelligence. There are a number of underlying principles behind video game AI, the major one being that of having a rule based system whereby information and rules are entered into a database, and when the video game AI is faced with a situation, it finds appropriate information and acts on it according to the set of rules that apply to the situation. If the AI database is large enough, then there is sufficient unpredictability in the database to produce a simulation of human choice.

If you are interested in working on video game artificial intelligence, then you need to be a skilled programmer in this area. You will learn how to build video game AI simulations, and to apply the AI techniques that can make video game artificial intelligence such an effective tool.

Salaries for video game programmers in general depends on experience and where you work. In the first few years, you can expect to get on average $50,000+, with an increase to $80,000+ with 5+ years of experience under your belt.